Syrian regime forces are said to be leaving the city of Homs as the jihadists fighting against dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime approach. Thousands of civilians flee.
The Russian embassy in Damascus urges its citizens to leave Syria.
The armed forces, led by the extreme Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have rapidly advanced south towards the country’s third largest city, Homs.
According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), they entered the towns of Tallbisah and Rastan on Friday morning and are a few kilometers from the outskirts of Homs.
During the night and morning, thousands of civilians have fled Homs, The Guardian reports. According to SOHR, they are heading towards the country’s coastal areas, which are strong regime strongholds.
In an attempt to halt the advance, Syrian warplanes have struck a highway bridge between Hama and Homs. The attack was an attempt to cut off the road between Hama and Homs to protect Homs, SOHR said.
Positions near the bridge are also said to have been attacked. The raids come after the jihadist-led forces on Thursday took control of the country’s fourth largest city of Hama, just north of Homs.
The militia groups last week took control of the major city of Aleppo in a surprise offensive where the Assad regime’s forces were initially quickly pushed back.
Capital is cut off
During the continued advance along a highway to the south, the jihadist-led forces have been attacked by Syrian and Russian military aircraft.
Homs is located around four miles south of Hama and has a population of around one million. If the militias take Homs, the capital Damascus will be cut off from President al-Assad’s main strongholds on the coast and the regime will lose gas pipelines and a refinery, among other things, according to experts.
Since the extremist movement HTS launched its surprise offensive on Wednesday last week, around 280,000 Syrians have been forced to flee, the UN says. The figure is believed to quickly rise to 1.5 million, according to the UN food program WFP.
Corrected: In an earlier version of the text, there was incorrect information about who was behind the raid.